Voters have distinct choices in fall

John Chase and David MendellTribune staff reporters

This story contains corrected material, published March 18, 2004

Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Jack Ryan are both Harvard educated, loaded with charisma and sport made-for-TV good looks, but that's about where the similarities end between the nominees who won their parties' U.S. Senate primaries on Tuesday.

The two are defined by sharp ideological differences, pointing to a general election campaign that harbors the potential to evolve into a sophisticated debate on the future direction of national policy. The early signs, however, indicate it will pick up with the same bitter intensity of the primary campaigns that turned on character issues and personal attacks.

Even before a primary ballot was cast Tuesday, Obama's top political consultant was firing away at Ryan as "extreme" for wanting to make President Bush's tax cuts permanent, while Ryan was already bashing Obama's positions on economic development and government as a social-service provider as a recipe for killing off job growth.

On the surface, the race has all the makings of a classic liberal-versus-conservative confrontation that should easily allow voters to decide between them--roughly along the lines of the early stages of the state's last open-seat Senate contest in 1996 when Democrat Richard Durbin defeated Republican Al Salvi.

Indeed, Durbin wasted little time getting out of the blocks before he tagged Salvi with the same "extreme" label.

But despite the well-defined ideologies behind Ryan and Obama, the lines could blur quickly as each candidate tries to move to the center to appeal to the vast number of independents and disaffected voters who didn't vote Tuesday.

As the two prepare to face off in November, Obama will have at least an early edge.

Not only has the state tilted increasingly Democratic in its general election results against a weakened Republican Party, but Obama is poised to gain national attention in his bid to become the country's only sitting African-American senator. Should he win in November, he would become only the third popularly elected black senator in U.S. history after Carol Moseley Braun, also from Illinois, and Edward Brooke, who represented Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979.

"Barack Obama captured the hearts and minds of Illinois voters," said New Jersey Sen. Jon Corzine, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "He will undoubtedly bring national fundraising attention to the Illinois Senate race because of his impressive credentials and the importance of this seat for the Democratic Party."

Indeed, on Monday, a CNN analyst called Obama a "man to watch in Illinois" and said if he won the primary "he will quickly become the country's hottest Senate candidate," noting he graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University, graduated from Harvard Law School and was the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

That could put Obama on the same track experienced by Braun when she pulled off a surprise win in the Democratic primary in Illinois in 1992 on her way to becoming the first African-American woman to serve in the Senate. After the primary, her campaign was instantly transformed into not just a cause celebre in the black community, but also among soccer moms in the suburbs and even politically active Hollywood liberals who suddenly fawned over Braun like a rock star.

In winning the primary, Obama stressed the leadership role he played in reforming the state's death penalty system and helping to enact racial profiling laws, and in finding support among black voters in urban areas, most of them in Chicago. But he made only small efforts Downstate, where Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes and multimillionaire Blair Hull concentrated much of their campaigns.

But as he makes a run in the general election to woo voters outside Chicago, he is expected to emphasize the role he played in welfare reform, the earned-income tax credit and expanding health insurance for children and poor families.

Mostly, though, he will run against Bush and try to link Ryan to the president's policies.

"All I know is what [Ryan] seems to stand for, and that seems to be a sort of Bushpolicy on steroids," said David Axelrod, Obama's lead consultant. "Our candidate stands in the mainstream and the other candidate is at the extreme."

For his part, Ryan may find himself largely on his own in a state that at one time had a finely honed Republican apparatus that helped keep the governor's mansion in GOP hands for more than a quarter century.

Bush's senior political adviser, Karl Rove, spoke highly of Ryan as a candidate almost a year ago, after former Gov. Jim Edgar, the White House's first choice to run to replace one-term conservative Republican Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, opted not to run.

But the political climate has grown more polarized since then amid uncertainties over the economy and jobs as well as concerns over the war in Iraq.

After losing the 2000 presidential contest in the state by 12 percentage points, the Bush campaign has all but written off Illinois, except for possible fundraising stops.

Moreover, Ryan finds himself injected into a leadership role in the effort to rejuvenate an Illinois GOP rocked by scandal that led to the indictment of former Gov. George Ryan, who is no relation. Before looking to broaden his base, Ryan must try to placate disparate elements within the Republican right.

And the Republican contender will have to find a way to satisfy continued questions about sealed portions of the case file involving his 1999 divorce to actress Jeri Ryan that dogged him during the final days of the primary campaign. He has maintained those files must remain closed to protect the couple's child, though a judge initially rejected attempts to seal the file out of concern over Ryan's prospective political career.

Most immediately, Ryan, a graduate of Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, has the advantage of his personal wealth and a compelling life story from which he can put on active display the "compassionate conservatism" that Bush has only been able to use as campaign rhetoric.

(This sentence as published has been corrected in this text:) Ryan can insulate himself from charges of racial insensitivity by discussing his decision to leave his investment-banking job at Goldman Sachs to teach black males at Hales-Franciscan High School, a Catholic school on Chicago's South Side. That also gives Ryan leverage to discuss his support for school vouchers.

Ryan preaches about how the free market is the best way to make sure "our children have a chance at a good job, a high-paying job with which to raise their own family, provide good clothes, warm food, a shelter over their children's heads." And Democrats, he says, are killing the golden goose.

"We're going to be on the offensive from now until November," Ryan said.